In a world where we are bombarded with images, ideas, and systems that drain the body, erode the soul, and devastate the mind, it can be easy to succumb to hopelessness. But poetry – both the reading and the writing thereof – can help us withstand such forces. In this generative workshop, participants will discover what it means to forge a lyricism of fortitude, imagination, endurance, and care, drawing inspiration from objects, artworks, memories, and poems by Kei Miller, Mahmoud Darwish, Wanda Coleman, Anthony Anaxagorou, and others. Get ready for a session of imagining and invoking: writing back against hopelessness, writing into new realities, and crafting poems that help us survive, thrive, find our voice, and inspire real change, both within and without.

About the facilitator:

Isabelle Baafi is the author of Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber / Wesleyan University Press, 2025), which is a Poetry Book Society (PBS) Recommendation, and Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020), which won a Somerset Maugham Award…